I've tried doing some searching here in the forums on this problem without any luck, although that may be because I'm having a tough time coming up with the best "description" of the problem. :)

Here's the issue:

On *some* of my recorded TV, when I go back to watch it, once I choose to "skip" forward the first time it shows the total duration of the show as 06:00 minutes regardless of the actual real duration and will not let me skip or forward past that point.  The show itself plays out its entire duration without a problem, but I can only skip or forward thru the first 6 minutes of it since any skip beyond that and MCE thinks I'm already at the end of the show.  (meaning if when I see this happen I just leave it alone and don't try and skip any commercials, then the show will play in its entirety without issue)

The thing is, all these shows are stored and recorded on a single hard drive, it does NOT exhibit this behaviour on all the recorded tv shows (lots of them play and skip thru just fine) and the Vista/MCE install is essentially virgin - no addins.

Here are some various specs of the system/software in use:

AMD Athlon 64 - X2-4200
2Gig RAM
Cyberlink PowerDVD 7/3 Ultra used as Audio/Video Decoder for MCE
Recorded TV stored on a 500GB SATA300 Hard Drive (using a Gigabyte motherboard w/Nvidia Nforce 430 chipset)

Any ideas or others who have seen this behaviour would be much appreciated!!

Matthew Toney

 

This is some sort of VMC bug that happens randomly with certain recordings.  I had this happen once a while back when I had my VMC setup with CableCard.   I don't think there is any available fix for this just yet.  (Hopefully in the SP1 package early next year)

The only thing you can do is just watch it straight through w/o trying to FF or Rewind.

I bet I average around 6-7 shows recorded per day normally, and usually at least one of those shows every day will exhibit this behaviour. 

I've saved a couple of 30 minute shows that do this and I'm going to copy them over to one of my other PCs with VMC on it and see if follows the file itself. :)

Hmmm..  copied a show with this behaviour to another VMC machine and tried it - it showed up with a thumbnail and everything looked normal, but attempting to PLAY the file would make VMC die instantly every time I tried it.  (as in, VMC just closes when you tell it to play this file - no messages, nothing in event-log, etc.)

 

Ugh.

 

Matthew Toney:

Hmmm..  copied a show with this behaviour to another VMC machine and tried it - it showed up with a thumbnail and everything looked normal, but attempting to PLAY the file would make VMC die instantly every time I tried it.  (as in, VMC just closes when you tell it to play this file - no messages, nothing in event-log, etc.)

What was the source of this recording?  Was it a terrestrial broadcast or recorded from CableCard?  If it came from a CableCard recording, then you unfortunately cannot copy the recordings to other machines and play them.

Should work for terrestrial.  Most likely, if you're terrestrial, then the recorded file is corrupt, hence the issue with it playing wrong on the original VMC and not playing at all on the other.

It was a terrestrial recording - no cablecard.   I agree there seems to be something corrupt about the file, but it plays if there are no skip requests on the original VMC so I'm not sure why it wouldn't on this other one.

For me, the bigger question is why these files are sometimes getting corrupted in the first place.  Since I've only gotten one reply to this thread confirming that someone else has seen the behaviour, I'm worried that there's something about my particular config that is the cause.  (and its making both myself and my wife nuts since you never know what recording it is going to do this to) :(

 

 

Well, this thread seems to be about basically the same issue:

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/212016/ShowThread.aspx#212016

Matthew Toney:

It was a terrestrial recording - no cablecard.   I agree there seems to be something corrupt about the file, but it plays if there are no skip requests on the original VMC so I'm not sure why it wouldn't on this other one.

For me, the bigger question is why these files are sometimes getting corrupted in the first place.  Since I've only gotten one reply to this thread confirming that someone else has seen the behaviour, I'm worried that there's something about my particular config that is the cause.  (and its making both myself and my wife nuts since you never know what recording it is going to do this to) :(

 

I doubt you're configuration is to blame.  I saw this happen to me a on a freshly configured OEM PC, and I've read about it online.   The OEM I purchased it from knew about the problem when I asked as well.  Hope that it's corrected in the upcoming Vista Service Pack.

Does this have any thing to dual with dual core drivers for amd? I know this problem would happen in mce 05 if you didn't have the correct dual core drivers installed

On the issue being based on config or not, I hope you're right, but if this is just a bug in VMC period, I would expect a lot more people to be complaining about basically the same issue.  I guess I could always be brave - backup the PC, and load the beta of SP1 if I got ahold of it.  (although thats not what I'm planning to do - at least not yet)


On the AMD Dual-Core driver bit, I don't know - I'm not sure I even realized there was such a thing as "dual-core AMD drivers". :)  How would I know if I have such loaded and where would I get them?

 

Well, nevermind on the "where can I find the driver" part - that only take a big of checking based on what you described, only the current driver on AMD's site (dated only last month) says its for XP and Windows 2003 - no mention of Vista.

From the various posts I've found related to this issue with AMD X2s and MCE 2005, I *am* going to try turning off the "AMD Cool & Quiet" feature in the BIOS since I currently have it on - that seemed to make a difference for some folks.

Mykroft:  Do you (or did you) happen to have an X2 CPU in the machines where you've seen the problem?

Matthew Toney:

Mykroft:  Do you (or did you) happen to have an X2 CPU in the machines where you've seen the problem?

Actually, I do have an AMD X2 CPU in that machine.  I can't say what kind of AMD drivers I have installed because I have no idea.   I did at one point turn off the Cool & Quiet feature of the CPU, but that was in response to other VMC issues I was having with CableCard.  Unfortunately, I abandoned my CableCard setup and went back to DirecTV because using CC in VMD really blew and ultimately never worked correctly for me.

I do have my VMC setup now on an older DirecTV STB to record some shows as a backup to my DirecTV HR20 DVR, and so far I can say that I haven't seen any re-occurances of this problem.

Well I've turned off the "Cool and Quiet" feature - I  guess I'll give this a day or two and see if it happens again.  (I actuallly average one recording a day with the problem so I should know quickly whether this had any effect)

 

 

You can count me in as one more to report this problem. The only varience being that my progress slider shows 10 minutes but all other behavior is the same. I have been putting up with this problem now for at least a month and a half and have just been to lazy to search here to see if I was the only one with the problem. You may be on to something here with your suspicions of AMD drivers as I also have an Athlon X2 4200+. Reinstalling has not fixed the problem. Hopefully somebody has a solution.

Machine specs:

Gateway GT5232E
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
2GB RAM
Nvidia 8600GT
200GB HD
200GB HD
500GB HD 

i get the same thing too but its 7 mins.... and the recording is just fine as long as i dont skip.  it is not a signal quality problem or the actual show would be screwed up.  it happens but pretty rarely to me.  once or twice every few weeks but it is very annoying not being able to ffw through commercials.